Speaker Cable Experimentation

After Thanksgiving feast, a friend and I decided to drink some port, listen to some music, and try to see if we could tell the difference between the two sets of speaker cables he around.

The test system:

Sonos Connect with Tidal Streaming
Peachtree Audio Nova Integrated
Harbeth P3ESR Speakers

The speaker cables under test:

Bluejeans Cable "Ten White" (Belden 10 Gauge 5000 Series Cable with Welded 25 Degree Spades)
DNM Design Stereo Solid Core Resolution Speaker Cable With Bananas (Single Cable Split - 1.3MM Conductors - Effectively 16 Gauge)

Both sets of cables are 3 meters long.

If you aren't familiar with DNM cables, check them out, number 62 on Stereophile's hot 100 products.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/40-years-istereophilei-hot-100-products-page-3

The music selection was a bit all over the place. EchoSmith, Norah Jones, Anoushka Shankar, Meg Mac, Lindsey Sterling, Etc...

We must have switched the cables back and forth about 20 times.

Initially, we thought we heard an obvious difference. The DNM's were "cleaner" "clearer" "more controlled" and had "better" mid and high frequency.

and we thought the Bluejeans cable was "muddier" and "darker".

But the more we switched cables, and the greater variety of music we listened to, we concluded that they were both good and any differences we might have heard were just differences. BUT it's possible that what we initially thought sounded "gooder" about the DNM may have actually been an electrical problem related to insufficient wire gauge... Specifically restricted low frequency, and boosted high frequencies.

Here is a bit of light reading if you care to learn more about choosing speaker cable, I found these articles to be really helpful in understanding how wire can "shape" the audio signal:

https://www.passlabs.com/press/speaker-cables-science-or-snake-oil
https://www.lifewire.com/speaker-cable-differences-3134603
https://www.lifewire.com/speaker-cables-make-a-difference-3134902
http://sound.whsites.net/cable-z.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_of_signals_on_conducting_lines

I found this quote from the Pass article to be particularly interesting:
"Remembering that we sent 50mV down the cable from the oscillator, it is surprising to discover amplitudes as high as 5V on the other end, an apparent gain of 1001 As shown by the ringing in the pulse waveforms, this highly resonant condition occurs with every variety of cable, but at different frequencies and 'Q' factors depending on the source impedance, the load impedance, and the type and length of cable."

Now i kind of want to invest in either buying or building more test tools to see if i can measure what i think i hear. Maybe start out with a better A/B testing rig, and adding some other cables (i think i have transparent, mogami, pear, and monster around)

To be continued:

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